I don't think this is true. Or at least I think healing potions are more common in 3.3 and 3.4 than they were in the past. Magnate can probably query the stats database and answer this for certain.

As far as I am aware, there haven't been any changes to consumable availability besides limiting stack size to 40 in 3.4. The only changes were availabilities of ego weapons/armors in the non-BM shops. !CCW should still show up just as often as it always did.

I'm not looking at the math, but it seems once you start around, DL 70 stores start to sell less, and I've noticed this on several occasions, to the point of CCW not showing up anymore, basic consumbles, wor,phase door, sure, but honestly at that point in the game CCW is not really very helpful, you find a few regular healing potions that help keep you alive but big healing potions, like life I found about 3 of those in my last half-troll run.

I found 1 rod of healing, which helps but takes forever to recharge, so it's basicaly a 1 shot go, ellesar, that helps but again it takes a while to recharge.
and I found maybe 20 to 30 potions of heal. Warriors might not be my strong suit, but I still don't feel like the odds are that good, on DL90 and later, but that's just my perspective as a player. Now if you find a select group of artifacts/ Deathwreaker/ Aglarang/ Glaive of pain/ then you stand a better chance. My best weapon was Calris, and it took forever to try and enchant it up to be useful, and it aggravates. My second best weapon was Anguriel, but it also aggravates. I like playing warriors but I don't like the limited availability of healing. It's no fun hitting DL90 and having to hide and teleport away all the time. And the game punishes you, if you don't wipe out the uniques as you come across them they all get jumbled together on the later levels, so you are forced to deal with them, maybe something could be done about that.

I like how the variants like Sang/O have handled warriors with abilites to compensate a melee character, and store investment in Sang to pay for the chance to find good items in stores, I like having options, not have my options taken away. but that's my 2 cents i'm a a good player, but not a pro, their is others better at it than me.

If your dungeon trips take a fixed number of player turns, then as your speed increases, the number of restocks the town will perform per dungeon trip will decrease -- town restocks happen every 10k game turns, which is 1k normal-speed turns but 2k +10-speed turns.

So I guess if you're making short dungeon trips with a high-speed character, then restocking could be an issue. But vital supplies should show up in high-enough quantities that they won't run out. What exactly are you short on? If it's healing items, then yes, learning when to spend them and when to save them is fairly important. Potions of Healing are for unique-killing; potions of *Healing* and Life are for Sauron and Morgoth. However, not all uniques are worth killing...

probably right about the store stocking per 10k turns hadn't considered that. Just to be curious whcih uniques do you considered to be not worth killing?
Tarrasque, Charchoth, Azriel, gabriel,Atlas, wolfhound of the Valar? my problem with leaving high powered uniques is they always come back on the last dungeon levels when your trying to save up for morgoth, guess a bunch of teleport other will be useful here?

Here is the changelog for 3.2.0, which I believe is the easiest Vanilla release so far. There are links to other changelogs in the sidebar; you should note that 3.3 changed Teleport Other to be a bolt instead of a beam, and change Destruction to remove artifacts from the level (without destroying them, i.e. they can still be generated if they haven't been ID'd).

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"3.4 is much better than 3.1, 3.2 or 3.3. It still is easier than 3.0.9, but it is more convenient to play without being ridiculously easy, so it is my new favorite of the versions." - Timo Pietila

probably right about the store stocking per 10k turns hadn't considered that. Just to be curious whcih uniques do you considered to be not worth killing?
Tarrasque, Charchoth, Azriel, gabriel,Atlas, wolfhound of the Valar? my problem with leaving high powered uniques is they always come back on the last dungeon levels when your trying to save up for morgoth, guess a bunch of teleport other will be useful here?

The old idea was to not bother with any unique that wouldn't get summoned with an escort. So you seem to have gotten the majority of the list. I never found this to be a big deal, provided you keep at least 1 ?banish for each escorted unique you haven't killed yet (gothmog, feagwath, vecna, lungorthin, moria, and maybe gabriel/radagast and kronos). The basic strategy is then, banish Z. Ensure no graveyard/demon pit/dragon pit on level, or that you've destructed or banished it. Fight in a destructed area. If the summon produces multiple uniques that can kill you with their attacks, teleport then banish, otherwise just banish the escorts.

In 3.4 summoning doesn't bring escorts anymore, so even the escorted killing need will soon be obsolete. Basically the idea for me is, you kill any unique you can kill without wasting too many resources, because those deep uniques give you the best chance, outside of vault hunting, for hitting a top artifact. The biggest problem for me is that there are just too many uniques to hunt them all down, it's incredibly boring.

At some point I'd like to give more incentives, both positive and negative for killing uniques, but that might be far off. Positive incentives might be better drops. One negative incentive idea I have is to allow the SUMMON_UNIQUE spell to call uniques that are elsewhere on the level to the summoner. This way, you're going to have to TO the tarrasque over and over again.

In 3.4 summoning doesn't bring escorts anymore, so even the escorted killing need will soon be obsolete. Basically the idea for me is, you kill any unique you can kill without wasting too many resources, because those deep uniques give you the best chance, outside of vault hunting, for hitting a top artifact. The biggest problem for me is that there are just too many uniques to hunt them all down, it's incredibly boring.

At some point I'd like to give more incentives, both positive and negative for killing uniques, but that might be far off. Positive incentives might be better drops. One negative incentive idea I have is to allow the SUMMON_UNIQUE spell to call uniques that are elsewhere on the level to the summoner. This way, you're going to have to TO the tarrasque over and over again.

Basically the idea for me is, you kill any unique you can kill without wasting too many resources, because those deep uniques give you the best chance, outside of vault hunting, for hitting a top artifact. The biggest problem for me is that there are just too many uniques to hunt them all down, it's incredibly boring.

This is basically what I do too. Once I get down to dlvl 98, I keep playing until I have good enough gear to take out Sauron and Morgoth, and then I go for them. I'll kill uniques in the process if I think doing so is reasonable, but most of them get to live. Summons during the final fight are a bit of a pain but they don't make the fight impossible by any means.

Summons during the final fight are a bit of a pain but they don't make the fight impossible by any means.

The question is, should we make it worse for better gameplay? Or are positive incentives enough? Or are there enough incentives as it is? I don't have a clue, but it's something that I've been mulling over for a long time now.

As for the change was it just difficulty or were the actual mechanics changes?

There were quite a few mechanics changes, some of which made game far too easy (for example rarities didn't go high enough and The One Ring was just as common as nine other not-too-rare artifacts). 3.4 seems to be a lot better than 3.3.

Based on your list of what makes game trivial you might like 3.4. I do, it actually feels more like 3.0.9 than 3.3.

BTW I have a keymap for F10 which for some reason always activates window menu outside of game itself (on Windows XP). Similar keymap in F9 doesn't do the same (F9 is bless, F10 is protection from evil)

BTW I have a keymap for F10 which for some reason always activates window menu outside of game itself (on Windows XP). Similar keymap in F9 doesn't do the same (F9 is bless, F10 is protection from evil)

so, trying to cast "protection from evil" using that keymap full of escapes on xp opens the window menu? mmm....I see an hint there...that is, don't waste time on trying to save your work, it's doomed, just exit using the file menu, and RUN RUN RUN AWAY from xp!!!

There were quite a few mechanics changes, some of which made game far too easy (for example rarities didn't go high enough and The One Ring was just as common as nine other not-too-rare artifacts). 3.4 seems to be a lot better than 3.3.

Based on your list of what makes game trivial you might like 3.4. I do, it actually feels more like 3.0.9 than 3.3.

BTW I have a keymap for F10 which for some reason always activates window menu outside of game itself (on Windows XP). Similar keymap in F9 doesn't do the same (F9 is bless, F10 is protection from evil)

Now that there aren't macros anymore but just keymaps, the [Escape]s should be unnecessary (unless I don't understand the code, which might be the case). No idea about the windows menu though, that is quite weird. (PS, there is updated keymap documentation in 3.4 beta's customize.txt like I promised for 3.3. Sorry it took so long!)